In honor of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame’s 20th anniversary, we invited the public to submit their favorite Creators and Creations. After tallying up your nominations (nearly 2,000 submissions!), a committee of industry experts narrowed down the list to the final twenty nominees.

Details about World’s Best Science Fiction Small Press and Pulp Magazine Collection High Grade

20,000+ Books Complete Sets Arkham House Fantasy Press

You are bidding on the most extensive, highest graded, complete set of all Small Press Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror books as well as the most extensive very rare pulp magazine collection in the world. Many of the sets below are the best in the world. A few are the only ones in the world, let alone in “like new” condition. Many are also complete (or near complete as some authors were dead at time of publication) signed sets.

You aren’t just buying a bunch of books, you are buying the rarest, and you are buying the best.

There is also a long Q&A section.

How can these things be in such high grade? Are there any fake dustjackets or facsimile reprint books?

EVERYTHING IS ORIGINAL. They are in such high grade because that’s what I go after. I have bought most of the books in the small press collection (for example) 2-4 times a piece. I love to marry high grade dustjackets to high grade books. I regularly buy the highest graded copy of any book that comes up for sale online from any of a couple dozen different book sites) as well as buy from older collectors with long time private collections. My record for any individual book is having bought it 13 times before finding a very high grade copy. Virtually none of these books came from collections I bought as a dealer. I had to buy them all individually. Most of the books I bought individually several times a piece. I’ve assembled all but one of these sets personally….

How large is the collection and book store?

Imagine a three car garage completely full from floor to ceiling, front to back without walking room in between, completely full of books. It’s the equivalent of about 350 to 400 “comic long boxes”, and will take the majority of an 18-wheeler for transportation purposes….

Why sell the personal collection and store together?

There is a lot of cross over interest, and frankly if I own even one book after this auction is over, I’ll just end up buying more….

1. Your bio says that “S.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma.” I am here to tell you that the Oxford comma has, unfortunately, been put on trial for its life. However, you are its defense attorney! Make your case.

Your honor, I humbly present the Oxford comma, also known as a serial comma. It is abastion of orderliness in a sea of grammatical chaos. This comma is an exemplary citizen, always obeying a simple rule: that it follows each item in a list until the last. Let us not create an exception to the rule! Let us not say, “It follows each item in a list except for the second to last and the last, which shall be joined by a conjunction.” Nay, let us stand fast against such unwieldy rule-making – such convoluted thinking – and embrace the simplicity that is embodied by this innocuous punctuation mark.

They currently reside at http://fanac.org/fanzines/Karass/” Go there for a blast from the past (1974-1978). Lots of good artwork too, especially in the final Last Karass issue. If you don’t remember it, Karass was a SF fan newszine I published. My thanks go to Joe and Mark for doing this.

Basically, Karass passed the torch to File 770 at the end of its run. Wasn’t that awhile ago!

The nomination of Hao’s work comes after Chinese author Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem – depicting an alien civilisation’s invasion of earth during the Cultural Revolution – won best novel at the Hugo Awards last year.

Folding Beijing is set in the future, where Beijing folds up so different groups occupy different levels. The protagonist, a waste worker from the Third Space, is hired by a student in the Second Space to send a love letter to a girl in the First Space, despite strong opposition from the girl’s family due to their class difference.

(6) FAN MAIL. Kurt Busiek tweeted a fan letter he once sent to a Marvel comic calling on them to revive the quality of their letter section.

(7) BOOKMARKED. Rachel Swirsky interprets her story “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” in a comment at File 770.

“If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love has the clear implication that the author desires violent justice towards people who beat the narrator’s lover into a coma over either their sexuality or their ethnicity.”

OK, author talking about their own story follows. Feel free to skip.

Desires it, sure, but then is like “wow, that would suck and leave victims like me which is not okay.” Or: “I have a base desire to hurt you despite my understanding that it is morally and ethically wrong and would have terrible consequences, and I can’t even really fantasize about it without being overwhelmed by that knowledge and returned to the reality of the real world where nothing helps, nothing changes things, and certainly not revenge.”

(To a certain extent, isn’t that the *same* point Wright makes about homosexuals and tire irons? It’s his impulse, he says, but he’s not doing it, so presumably he’s aware that it is wrong–I hope–or at least that it has social consequences he doesn’t wish to encounter.)

I’m not suggesting you didn’t understand this in your comment. Just that it is a thing that confuses and bugs me about the revenge reading that’s been put forward, since it’s specifically an *anti-revenge* story.

It is an *anti-revenge* story because one of my intimate relations had recently uncovered a history of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and fuck if I didn’t fantasize about stopping or revenging it. But the damage is done. It is incontrovertible. And there is no revenge to be had; the abuser is still around, but what’s the point? It’s been thirty years. The person who did it, and the moment when it could have changed, are gone. All that’s left is the reality of the abuse and its long-lasting damage.

Not that I realized that was the impetus when I was writing it. I didn’t put it together until a lot later, that the story, and the angst I was going through over that, were related.

(I continue to have no problem with people who dislike it based on actual literary criteria, personal definitions of SF, or for sentimentality or manipulation. I would ask the folks in category two to consider noting that “it’s sff” or “it’s not sff” is actually a matter of opinion, not fact, since there is no reifiable SFF; it’s not like it’s a platonic thing that can be identified and pointed to. It’s a mobile boundary, interacting with a lot of other things. In this case, the interaction occurs around conditional tense and storytelling, which has a long history of being considered SFF in cases like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and folklore, but I suspect there are also works that are considered realist that use the device. I don’t actually have an investment in whether it’s SFF or not, as I cannot be moved to give a damn about genres, but I think both positions are valid.)

OK, done, thanks, needed a rant.

(8) GET YOUR SECRET DECODER RINGS READY. The signal is on its way from John Scalzi —

Want to erect a huge, neon sign that says "I'm an enormous asshole" over your head? Just use the phrase "virtue signalling" as a criticism!

@Rose Embolism: Read the book “Cuisine and Empire”. It’s just what you’re looking for.

(3) Oxford Comma 4 LYFE.

(4) I have a big soft spot for Linda Bushyager as she once got me a VHS copy of a movie I wanted very very much that didn’t come out on video for quite a while. And it was good enough to run another generation off for my pals. Note that even at this late date, I am not mentioning it because studio lawyers.

I use the serial comma (or Oxford or American) because that was what I was taught to use. It works for me, and I see no reason to stop using it. Others can go ahead and use the Other Comma as they please. I won’t tell them they’re Wrong, as long as they extend me the same courtesy. And stop coming up with dubious logic to support their position. “It breaks when you have only two items”, really?

“Virtue signalling” – from what I’ve seen, a term that at its core could be used for productive dialogue about the dangers of trying to say the right things for the sake of making yourself look good without a good understand why some things are “wrong” (ie they are harmful/oppressive) and/or a dialogue about the need to leave your ego at the door in social justice efforts, but much like the term “politically correct” and SJW, it’s been taken over by tone-deaf opponents of all civil rights efforts and mangled perhaps beyond saving. As some have pointed out, the use of the phrase itself has become a form of virtue signalling, in more of a “I’m better/smarter than you” way. I think we have more than enough of that sort of scorekeeping in social justice circles, so no thanks lol

@Tasha – all the best for a speedy recovery! That stone sounds like a real doozy @_@

@ Rev Bob: Fair point. I hadn’t meant for the song to be a comment on the Puppies or even the Hugos so much as about Filers, but it’s reasonable that under the circumstances it might be hard to make a joke that even touches on those things.

Do you know how hard it is not to ask when you put it that way? It’s like a dare dropped. But I think I’ve created enough arguments and flounces for today so I’m gonna behave.

Oh, I only meant that the reason I own a 19th century mathematics text in Finnish isn’t nearly as interesting as the mere mention of it. (Someone I dated spotted it at a used book store and picked it up for me on a whim. This is not the most peculiar thing that someone I was dating picked up for me on a whim. That would be the monkey skull spotted at a garage sale.)

When I wanted a picturesque “old looking book” it didn’t matter much what the subject was. Alas, the oldest physical book in my collection (Thomas Richards’ 1753 Antiqua Linguae Britannicae Thesaurus, an English-Welsh, Welsh-English dictionary) wouldn’t do because it long since lost its front cover and isn’t at all photogenic. (That one came to be from an SCA acquaintance who found it in his late grandfather’s attic and figured I was the only person he knew who would value it.)

The books that made it to the photoshoot were the aforementioned bible, the math text, the member of the five-volume 1881 Ordbog til det AEldre Danske Sprog (1300-1700) that was in best condition, Robert Ioan Prys’s 1899 English and Welsh Pronouncing Dictionary (do you see a trend here?), and Friedrich Ludwig Stamm’s 1885 Ulfilas: die uns erhaltenen Denkmaler der gothisch. Now that I think about it, I think my final choice was the Prys dictionary, on the basis of visual esthetics and best size and proportions relative to the rose.

I use the serial comma (or Oxford or American) because that was what I was taught to use. It works for me, and I see no reason to stop using it. Others can go ahead and use the Other Comma as they please. I won’t tell them they’re Wrong, as long as they extend me the same courtesy. And stop coming up with dubious logic to support their position. “It breaks when you have only two items”, really?

I assume this was aimed at me, since I’m the one who referred to breaking when you only have two items. Did you miss the part where I say that I use the serial/Oxford comma myself? When I said “it” breaks, I wasn’t referring to the serial comma; I was referring to Ms. Swirsky’s “proof” that the serial comma is better because its rules are simpler.

More specifically, she said (incorrectly) that the rule for the serial comma is that you put a comma after every item but the last. That rule breaks when you have two items. So the actual rules for the serial comma are not simpler than the rules for the standard comma.

That doesn’t mean the standard comma is better, though. The other mistake Ms. Swirsky made was assuming that simpler rules are better. In fact, an even simpler rule would be: don’t use commas. But that way lies madness! 😀

Oh god yes people should use commas and other punctuation because otherwise everything starts to look like a facebook post from someone who doesn’t quite understand how English works except maybe with better spelling…!

I’ve noticed the comma rules have too many names for the same rule. I no longer know which comma rule I use. It’s the one I was taught in an intro to law class. Never did understand punctuation in English class. But explain to me how I might be screwed over by someone I hire due to a misplaced comma and the court would uphold them not me and I never forget.

A number of the examples used here have left me totally confused. The ex-wives one followed by a number of men’s names clearly requires knowing the full example.

To Dara Korra’ti: I encourage you to continue scanning in Lexfanzine. It was important enough that UC-Riverside has 4 issues in their collection, and I suspect that there are, or will be, researchers who are interested in what was going on in the various local SF clubs around the country. Data about club newsletters such as Rune (http://fancyclopedia.org/rune), Texas SF Inquirer (http://fancyclopedia.org/texas-sf-inquirer), and Madison’s Janus/Aurora (http://fancyclopedia.org/janus) are worth having around, and scans of them are even better. When you get them scanned, you should look at hosting them on efanzines.com as well as LexFA.com. fancyclopedia.org likes to tell “the story behind” the fanzine; isfdb.org likes to list the contents in the zines (e.g. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?33740 for “Janus”), and efanzines.com, of course, likes full scans. If you get me the data, I can add entries for LexFanzine for either fancyclopedia or isfdb.